I recently attempted to use Migration Assistant to move over my Macintosh HD (Disk Image) to a new machine (Apple gave me a replacement). It's been sometime since I've used Migration Assistant, and was skeptical to try it this time. I went ahead and restored the disk image via Disk Utility and selected Migration Assistant. At first, I was surprised to not have suffered any of the perennial issues. It wasn't long however, that I soon realized that Migration Assistant is still buggy. Moral of the story: if you use Migration Assistant and Accordance crashes on open every time. It's not Accordance, it's a bug in Migration Assistant.

I have a question then that follows this topic. Rather than using Migration Assistant, could I take my 500 GB hard drive from my old (early 2008) 15 inch MBP and install it into a 2009 13 inch MBP as is, with the OS and all apps already installed?

I don't know if OSX will adjust drivers etc. upon booting or will I encounter a problem? It is just that I am limited to 4 GB RAM on my older 15 inch, but have 8 GB RAM on the newer 2009 Unibody and would like to switch over, but without reinstalling everything. Thanks in advance.

Yes. You can. You will need a third party cloning application. There are several that I've used (some of which are SuperDuper! and Carbon Copy Cloner). I'll let you peruse the various Mac/Apple websites for reviews.

N.B.: If you use SuperDuper!, you need to clone the drive in Safe Start mode (hold shift down during a restart).

I have used Carbon Copy Cloner and love it. But what I actually want to do is just open up my 15 inch, pull the HD as is, and place it into the 13 inch, and fire it up. No copying. Do you know if this will work?

In theory yes, but I would check a few compatibility issues before I attempted it. What I would examine closely is the specs on Serial-ATA, etc. Either way, I would highly recommend a clean install. You might try connecting with someone at a Mac Store (not Apple store). When I lived in Portland, the tech that worked at the Mac Store would share more openly about these sort of questions.

I ended up having to pull the hard drive from my 15 MBP (2008) after the Nvidia chip died two weeks ago. As a quick fix to keep going in the midst of my work, I tried installing it into my wife's 2009 13 inch, as is with the OS and all my apps on it. Fired it up and it worked! The start up screen asked for my password and I was back in the saddle. Of course, I had to get a new MBP eventually, which just arrived last week .